I picked up Touhou 6: EoSD about a year ago (...legally...) and figured that normal, well, should be normal people. Since then I've been through many of the games, and although the foundation for each game is pretty much the same, different patterns, better music, and some side gimmicks makes getting each new game worth it, for me at least. (Current -> 10.5)

Minecraft - Picked it up during its Alpha phase to check out the growing hype. Didn't quite grow on me, but it's still sitting on my cpu for that one day when I have absolutely nothing to do.

McPixel - The fuck am I doing?

^^^ yeah I just got McPixel too. I haven't played it but I know looking at the trailer gives me a what the fuck sort of vibe. I'll play it later. Kinda looks like a point and click adventure?

geo said:
^^^ yeah I just got McPixel too. I haven't played it but I know looking at the trailer gives me a what the fuck sort of vibe. I'll play it later. Kinda looks like a point and click adventure?

Yeah indie has boggled my mind. Does this mean Square Enix is indie? Because they publish their own games.

I've got McPixel downloading. I'm not expecting much, but some of the best movies are the ones you have low expectations going in.

DLC QUEST is more of a joke game that can be seen in a 20 - 40 minute Youtube video. These jokes are all pretty old and have been said many times on podcasts for the past 2 - 3 years. I didn't need to pay money to see or read the jokes. The game is just too quick and empty to be a game. It could have just been an animation on youtube. It wasn't worth the $3. I'm not sure its worth $1. This is the first game that I played on Steam that made me wonder about the whole 'Project Greenlight' just lowering the quality of games. It made me think there are no more good games, so they need to let in all the shit games to make more money.

geo said:This is the first game that I played on Steam that made me wonder about the whole 'Project Greenlight' just lowering the quality of games. It made me think there are no more good games, so they need to let in all the shit games to make more money.

Lolwhut? Greenlight has absolutely nothing to do with the quality of games on Steam. It's simply a system to let Valve gauge general interest from users towards potential releases. Whatever they put up on Steam still goes through Valve's curation, in both good and bad, since it has meant that plenty of popular, higher quality games still haven't made it through just because Valve doesn't feel like it.

Jodwin said:
Lolwhut? Greenlight has absolutely nothing to do with the quality of games on Steam. It's simply a system to let Valve gauge general interest from users towards potential releases. Whatever they put up on Steam still goes through Valve's curation, in both good and bad, since it has meant that plenty of popular, higher quality games still haven't made it through just because Valve doesn't feel like it.

You're right.... the people vote on the games. War Z got picked up and put on. Game Dev Tycoon got picked up yet... won't become available until August? They've picked up alphas and such. Which is good because devs get paid for their work without having to kickstarter it. But its also negative in a way, because game makers lose interest.

MCPIXEL was shockingly enjoyable and entertaining. To break it down for you, its a point and click puzzle game set in brief different scenarios, such as in a falling elevator, you need to analyze how to save the day. You have an emergency button, elevator buttons, an old man, a bell hop and an extinguisher. What do you do to save the day? These are wacky and weird situations, usually involving bombs or gasoline. None of which lasts no longer than 15 seconds. The game is broken up into 4 chapters, each chapter has 3 or so clusters of 6 scenarios / challenges. If you fail doing a challenge, you don't do it over and over until you get it right, you just go to the next uncompleted scenario.

I completed the entire first chapter in about 15 minutes, which is 18 challenges? There is free DLC, which is a series of selectable clusters made by fans or whomever. There is a lot of content here, but the real catch is the challenges just don't last a long time. They're pretty easy to figure out.

The cherry on top of this is that there are some laugh out loud results. Maybe the results are so LOL because they're so unexpectedly random. Again, I expected nothing from this game and got a lot of entertainment from it. I'll be returning to the game to see the other quirky scenarios with crude graphics.

I've sank several more hours into FTL: FASTER THAN LIGHT all over again :-) Fantastic space vessel command simulator game. Each playthrough is different. Each star system is different, every battle is different whether its randomized enemy ships or handicaps against you. The random events feel like they have consequence to them. Do you drink with someone knowing they might poison and kill a crewman or do you not drink with them and suffer their wrath?

CLOSURE is a black and white alienish platform puzzle game where the world exists because of light. Without light, there is only nothing and I mean nothing, if you try to jump onto a platform that doesn't have light near it, you will fall through the world. If you are swimming and your light floats away, you will drop out of the world without it. Solid walls become jumps when there is no light on them. The object of each of the almost 100 levels is basically to make it to the door at the end. You can pick up lit orbs, you can put lit orbs into carriers that will carry them. This leads to some really interesting platform mechanics, such as moving lights turn into elevators when normally they'd be solid walls. You can put orbs into transporters that will make 2 areas lit instead of 1. There are push boxes, push rollers that will of course roll, lit push boxes, lamps that you can adjust to cast light onto different areas and so on. This is a unique, enjoyable, atmospheric, immerse game, but I have a feeling that once you're done, you're done. They made a really alien world here and the music is awesome and belongs in a suspense drama. After the tutorial levels when the game opens up, the music eases up so its not as intense. Very worth a play through, I own it a few different ways, Steam, GOG, did I mention its free for Playstation Plus members?

INTRUSION 2 is a 2D run n' gun action platformer along the lines of Metal Slug or more vaguely Contra. This is one badass, fun game, with epic, memorable bosses and creative elements like some pretty basic physics and destruction. You can destroy log bridges to send everyone falling to their doom, blow up the supports of watchtowers. Crush enemies under boulders you push over. Physics like that, which add to the fun. The enemies can take a beating and the weapons feel good, but even if there is a variety of weapons, not many feel different from one another. The levels seem like a marathon. They are so long you might find yourself wondering when they end. This is probably good.

Earlier I mentioned epic bosses. I don't use that term lightly. It makes me feel weird, but let me tell you about the first boss, a helicopter or hovercraft with arms with multiple phases. If its not shooting at you, its dropping soldiers out. If its not trying to hand pound you into the ground, its literally crawling after you. Its insane and awesome. It is very memorable and covers a lot of ground.

To keep things fresh, you can pilot mech suits... if not grab the gun off of a destroyed mech and use it on your enemies. Oh and if that's too normal for you, in the first level, you can ride a giant Arctic wolf. Its pretty nice.

The game is challenging, you do have a health bar, and ammo depletes, and you can die more from the controls than you do anything else, BUT the game is very forgiving, with plenty of checkpoints.

The controls take a bit of getting use to. You have your standard jump, duck and weapon switch keys, but then to aim you use your mouse. This allows for more precise aim, but I'm more used to the Contra controls of having 8 direction shooting instead of precision. If you're used to Teraria, you'll be used to this. There is floaty jumping that can take some getting used to and the physics seem really light and springy. The boxes will bounce around if lightly nudged. Some of the animation is springy like old cartoon characters. That is probably Flash animation for you.

It took a while to get over it, but when I did, I found this game to be really fun to play. There are crazy Holy shit moments, and moments where the physics can have some unique experiences for a 2D run n gun game, such as seeing a mech jump onto a floating box. The box bounced the mech up and kinda floated away just enough for a giant fish to eat the mech. That wasn't supposed to happen, but it did, and it was cool.

Rogue Legacy is a pretty cool condensed and faster paced metroidvania with roguelike elements and persistent progression. In other words, you enter a castle and try to get as much loot as possible, die in five minutes, pick a new character, spend the money you gathered and then go to a new randomly generated castle, rinse and repeat. The game controls really well (at least on a controller, although you'll have to use Joy2Key if you don't have an 360 pad) and it's pretty darn challenging. Especially so if you haven't played a lot of 2D Castlevanias or other similar titles. However the persistent progression helps things nicely, letting you get a little bit further on each try.

Note: If you're interested in the game and live in EU get it through the game's website instead of Steam. You'll save money because you can pay in dollars and you'll still get a Steam key.

Oh I agree, Rogue Legacy looks awesome. Its everything I wish Teraria was. I've been learning recently Steam gets desperate for money and they'll probably have a half price sale for it in a month or two. While I have no doubts that I can get $15 worth of entertainment out of it... Steam and HumbleBundles have spoiled me :-)

ABOBO'S BIG ADVENTURE is a really funny, free parody game with a lot of gameplay variety. Each level is a different gameplay style, such as a double dragon parody, Mario swim level parody, zelda parody, megaman parody, contra parody and more. Each of the parodies feels good to play and this would be a good engine for the game maker to do other games if he hasn't already. You don't need to be familiar with any of the games parodied to find it funny or entertaining. Very easy NES style controls. I'd play it a lot more if it was in my Steam library instead of free on some website.

THOMAS WAS ALONE (but he really isn't) is a platforming puzzle game that borders on tedium as you guide a few block 'characters' to their respective exits. Everything is a block or cubes, straight out of what would look like Atari, but with modern improvements so you don't notice the lack of textures. Things like lighting, good simple, yet dynamic backgrounds and the fact that the level always looks to be at a slight tilt. While it might not stand out visually, the game has good mellow and trippy background music that is just soothing to complete each level. There is also a well voiced narrator that just talks over a few parts of the levels to give the characters life when really, they're just blocks. There is quite a lot of fan art for these 'characters.'

The controls are really as simple as they can be. So simple, you don't even need a controller. Arrows to move the character, a jump button and buttons to switch to the next or previous character.

Its all nice on the eyes and the ears, the only real problem is this is just tedious. Each character has their own unique style. Some are short and can fit where others cant. Some are tall, some float. You can use characters as stepping stones so they can make it up ledges and this is where the game hits a tedium. Imagine to make it up a ledge, you need to use 2 characters so that the short character can make it up. Then do that 5 times and 5 more times before the end of the level. Sure its not every level, but it really feels dull having to switch between 3 characters, get them in position just to ensure 1 of them gets to his exit. It gets into the realm of being a chore. Sure it doesn't take that long to complete each area, nor is it difficult, but it just feels slow having to use 3 characters to make it the slightest bit further. I don't feel any sense of accomplishment getting to the next level.

To make up for that though, the game has frequent checkpoints.... especially right before dumb deaths. Deaths that might have 1 character standing on top of a floating character, but when you jump out of the water as the floating character, the character on top flies into a bed of spikes. Well, luckily the game knows this will usually happen, so there's a checkpoint right behind it. Another plus that the game has is instant respawn. It keeps you going like Super Meat Boy. This helps the game a lot.

There are other platforming puzzle games that are better challenges and funner. However, because of the music, narrator and the simplicity, it is a very soothing stress reliever to play.

While i could let this thread die... Humble Bundle is doing a Spiderweb Games indie bundle of old school RPGs / Dungeon Crawlers that might remind you of early 90s PC gaming. You can pick up all 15 games for around $5 or for $1 you can pick up 13 games. While this isn't my cup of tea, I bought it anyway.

Some of you old school RPG / dungeon crawlers out there might enjoy it for the price.

It won't be $1 much longer. I think the weekly sale is only on for another day or so. Jump on this if you're even vaguely interested.

I haven't played any of the earlier games, but Exile 3 was a ton of fun. Although it definitely requires more time and commitment than many other RPGs do (largely due to how the (relatively realistic) conversation system works). I've tried the Avernum series, but never could get into those...

If you like RPGs and games that will eat your soul, don't pass Exile by. But if you don't...well, then don't buy them I guess. :P

I'm glad I posted about the old school RPG game pack then. I was kinda iffy on mentioning it, since this forum is geared more toward FPS, but since Doom is a 90s game and all of these look to be 90s games, I'm happy someone has played them :-)

Just to put this out there, I gave the free Exile 3 release a go and it doesn't work on Win7 64 bit. If you're interested, you need to either have an XP box somewhere or use a virtual machine. I tested Win XP Mode for Win7 and it worked really well for Exile 3.

I suppose this is why it's freeware; at least I wouldn't want to bother with all the support issues when people buy the game on Steam/GoG/whatever.

Jodwin said:I haven't played any of the earlier games, but Exile 3 was a ton of fun.

You should definitely try them. The storyline across the whole series is like a good book. You can also see how the game mechanics evolved while the core gameplay stayed the same.

Personally I think the first one is a bit too simplistic, while number 3 is unnecessarily complex (extended character creation, perks, jobs, passage of time having an impact on the cities). Exile 2 strikes a perfect balance IMO.

Maybe this is old news, but War Z is now called Infestation: Survivor Stories. I'm not sure if that's because of World War Z in theaters or its another deceitful tactic they're using to not have the negative press by being War Z. In November they were blocked from trademarking or naming it War Z.... yet they continued anyway.

I would put up State of Decay, but since it has a different publisher, that would make it non indie. There are plenty of similar indie zombie survival games coming down the pipeline.

When will devs make survival games against monsters instead of zombies or having the US army after you?

Another free indie game for Playstation Plus is one that i've played elsewhere and just don't care about >>

MACHINARIUM is a point and click adventure from 2009 that really streamlines the whole point and click to a fault. You can really just click on 1 thing amongst a pile of junk. So I end up just clicking systematically with no thought. Other point and click adventures would have dialogs that would punish you (by wasting your time with a dialog) for incorrect clicks. Get an item? Then use the item and just click on everything on screen until you get it right. Its very mindless. The cursor will also change to highlight to whatever interaction you can do. To top it off, the game gives you hint bubbles that help a lot and you can even use one extra hint.

On the plus side, it has some great hand drawn artwork with soothing background music. But really, I play games to be entertained. This seems like busy work. While there is charm to it, I don't find it rewarding or fun to click on things to help a little robot go through a junk yard. If this is your sort of thing, then its free on Playstation Plus.

I'm noticing more 'indie' looking games have publishers like EA, Ubisoft and others.

I swear I already reviewed this somewhere in this thread.... but...

ION ASSAULT I have this game for PSN as well. On the surface it looks like a new school version of the arcade classic Ateroids. It is a simple mouse and arrow key game with a few special weapons. The objective of each stage is simple.... blow up all of the asteroids.

Ion Assault has a few twists that make the experience both better and worse. The improvements to the experience are simple, variety of enemies and boss fights in the story mode. These are the only good things about the game that add to the old Asteroids formula without taking away.

Now for the negatives, lets start with the fact that you need to absorb ions to shoot. This means you need to hold down your mouse button and fly around the single screen stage to collect ions. The more ions you have, the stronger your shot will be from your space ship. Its not just enough to hold it down, but having to collect the ions seems like a chore. Your ion blaster doesn't feel impactful at all even when fully charged with a screen full of ions.

Another downside is having these ions EVERYWHERE means the screen is covered in blue and for the most part the enemies are blue... a brighter blue, but a blue nevertheless. It just makes it more difficult to see. This is a game about precision, having to shoot in a direction with your mouse, all while piloting around a single screen. To make things worse, if you knock the screen border, your ship will bounce off and most likely hit something and make you die.

This is not a fun game, but it is a challenging one. Every level / stage feels exactly the same as the previous. Destroy asteroids. Shoot them and they split in pieces which then need to be shot again and again until they are no more.

I cannot even justify this game for $2 even if the Steam version is superior to the PSN version in ways that seem inconsequential. Oh and to top it off, Beat Hazard is just a lot more fun and you can see what you're even doing without having to charge a beam.

As I mentioned last time. Its disappointing that a lot of indie looking games are being published by Ubisoft. Games like Cloudberry Kingdom, Scott Pilgrim vs the World, Quest For Epic Loot and X-Blades. Shank as well has a publisher. Games like Dark look indie, but have publishers. Seems like all PSN exclusive games like Fat Princess, Unfinished Swan and Sound n Shapes have Sony Santa Monica tacked on as a developer.

FIST PUNCHER Side scrolling beat em up

BLEED Dual Stick platform shooter

CASTLESTORM Angry Birds with gameplay variety

TIME SQUID uh line drawing point A to be game with obsticles?

PAPERS, PLEASE Character checking Sim like a basic version of LA Noire

INTERSTELLAR MARINES 4 player co op FPS game. Been in the works since 2009...

Yep use a mouse and keyboard or a dual stick controller. I'm noticing games are getting shorter and shorter. Which is fine to be honest. there are just too many games / indie games out there. Ittle Dew is 4 hours long. DLC Quest the Game is 20 - 40 minutes long.